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Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation

O'Neill Media Center Stacks E441 .A37 1998 pt. 1

17th-century Paradoxes:End of blood inheritance /

Creation of blood inheritance

Week 9 – Lecture 1

30 October 2007

I. Inventing “Europe” and “Race”:

17th-century TURN TO THE BODY

1496:Christians v. heathens/infidels

“Race” = religious tribe

1746:

European powers v. non-Euro

“Race” = geographical biological phenotype

II. Problem: What is “Europe”?

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III. Problem: Who is a “European”?

Phenotype

17th CENTURY: From “race” as religious [“heathen”]

to “race” as physical/ biological [“non-white”]

“all the observable characteristics of an organism --- such as shape, size, color and behavior ---that result from the interaction of its genotype (total genetic inheritance) with the environment.”

IV. A New Relationship to the “Body”

“Look, the body really is a machine!”

“The body is a machine.”---René Descartes (1600s)

A Passion for Observation!

Corpse

Cloth

V. Indentureship: The Terrible Transformation

from “temporary” to “one’s natural life”

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Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation

O'Neill Media Center Stacks E441 .A37 1998 pt. 1

1619-1650

VI. Racialism: Inventing “Whiteness” through Legislation

The Terrible Transformation: told in marriage legislation

cf. Mary Douglas: anxieties of the body politic are written on individual bodies--- e.g., legislation regarding sexual unions of bodies

1705 Turning point:

Virginia General Assembly

• “All servants imported and brought into this County… who were not Christians in their native Country… shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion… shall be held to be real estate…

• “If any slave resist his master… and shall happen to be killed in such correction… the master shall be free of all punishment… as if such accident never happened.”

I. Conclude: Transformation from 1650-1700

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From “Heathen” to “Phenotype”• 1639: Maryland: Christian

baptism does not make a slave free– NB: COMPARE NAZIS– The end of Christian/

non-Christian distinction– From now on: biological

[phenotype: skin color] rationality, not religious

• 1640: Jamestown: an African is punished for escaping with “being an indentured servant for the time of his natural life.”

Epilogue: 1670 Anthony and Mary

• 1670: Anthony Johnson dies a free man

• Wife Mary renegotiates the lease for 99 yrs

• August 1670: all-white jury rules that Anthony’s land can be seized by the state “because he was a Negro and by consequence an alien”– NB: SANDER GILMAN:

distance / foreign / alien

• Son Richard---a free man with wife and children evicted

• Property goes to wealthy white neighbor George Parker

• Sum: Virginians no longer needed to “lure”workers to plantations; now they could buy them and chain them there.

Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation

O'Neill Media Center Stacks E441 .A37 1998 pt. 1

1650-1700

17th-c. timeline: Invention of racialized slavery• 1618: Begin 30-yrs war• 1632: Galileo at Inquisition• 1632: Rembrandt Anatomy Lesson

• 1648: Peace of Westphalia

• 1687: Newton, Principia Mathematica

• 1641: MASSACHUSETTSbecomes first colony in North America to recognize slavery as a legal institution:

• 1650: Connecticut• 1661: Virginia

• 1663: Virginia law: if a child is born to a slave, that child also enslaved – NB: BLOOD INHERITANCE

“We study history

not in order to make

the unfamiliar familiar …

but in order to make

the familiar unfamiliar.”

“You show me the thing

you think is

most natural in the world …

and I’ll show you just how

contingent and constructed

it really is.”

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• A “terrible transformation”between 1650 and 1750: from heathenism to racialism.

• NB: THERE WERE OPTIONS:– Blacks and whites both indentured– Both condemned to lifelong

servitude

– The conscious choice was made: invent the system of color difference.

– NOTHING INEVITABLE OR ‘NATURAL’ ABOUT ‘RACE’ AS BIO-CONSTRUCT

• cf. social contract! A “nominalist” agreement

• Root in THE BODY: make what is arbitrary seem “natural”

NOTE PARADOX OF 17TH CENTURY:

Capitalism is ending the old system based on land/blood-inheritance … i.e., the “order/estates” system

“Third estate” becoming “middle class”

AT THE SAME TIME:

Racialism is the invention of a new kind of relationship based on blood-inheritance

II. “Modernity”: from “Nature” to “Social Convention”

[or: from essentialism to nominalism]

NB: What is a thing worth? Fixed essences = essentialism = eternal

How Much is Something Worth?

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica [1200s]

First, Aquinas sets up his opponents’ arguments:

Then Aquinas answers his opponents and draws his own conclusion --- he appeals to the Gospel of Matthew in his deduction:

NB: There is such a thing as a FIXED (just) price for an item (what would a nominalist say???)

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REVIEW:

Essentialism v. “NOMINALISM”

There is no essentialconnection between a thing and the name (representation / meaning) we give it

IN OTHER WORDS: names --- and meanings AND PRICES--- are ARBITRARY and CONTINGENT agreements Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name

would still smell sweet as a rose.”

•“Real [natural] price” = price in labor; exchange of labor

“Nominal [market] price” = price in capital [value consented to]

Note: radical shift from Aquinas/essentialist questions, e.g.,

What is a thing “worth”??? What is a “just price”?

These “essentialist” questions don’t make sense in this system.

Great Tulip Crash of 1637

Cf. Voltaire on “luxury” !!!

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Gap-Child-Labor.html

India Says Activists Hyping Child Labor

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPublished: October 30, 2007Filed at 6:15 a.m. ET

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's trade minister insisted Tuesday that activists were hyping accusations of child labor in the country, taking a defensive stand following a report that Gap Inc. had sold clothes made by children in a New Delhi sweatshop.Commerce Minister Kamal Nath warned the result of the bad publicity could be rich countries limiting exports from poor nations such as India, which has a well-documented problem with child labor.

New Gap classic T: $12.95Made of: 100% cotton. Factored in cost of labor?

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Banana Republic Basic Crew: $15.50Also made of: 100% cotton --- advertised with a smiling face

Abercrombie T: $24.50Cost of materials + labor?

What is a just price?

“Real” price = materials + labor

“Market” price = object’s value as a commodity [i.e., as interchangeable unit of exchange].

NB: What is the commodity being sold?

Q: Why do we buy commodities at “market prices” that are grossly inflated with respect to “real” prices?

A: Adam Smith:

“vanity and pageantry”i.e.: we purchase luxuries in order to symbolize our place in a society’s hierarchy.

NB: In a capitalist system one’s identity is no longer based on blood inheritance. Purely arbitrary and contingent agreement. i.e., in terms of capital/status

In a commercial country abounding with every sort of expensive luxury, the sovereign, in the same manner as almost all the great proprietors in his dominions, naturally spends a great part of his revenue in purchasing those luxuries. His own and the neighbouring countries supply him abundantly with all the costly trinkets which compose the splendid but insignificant pageantry of a court.

http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won/won-b5-c3-ss1.html

From “Estates/Orders” to “Social Class”:From old “essentialist” order to new “nominalist” order

Status / hierarchy: no longer based on “nature” [blood inheritance];rather, on social “convention” [accumulated capital [Locke: “labor”]

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Field songs---> Negro spirituals---> Gospel -->Blues--> Ragtime--> Jazz -->-->1950s Rock ‘n Roll [Elvis] --> -->1960s Motown -->Rap -->Hip-hopNote irony: the only uniquely American art form comes from African slave tradition

“Good Lord [Run Old Jeremiah]”

Ring Shout: African slave/Christian worshipNB: hybridity!!!

African: Rhythms; scales; percussion; improvisation (shouts:call-response)

Christian: baptism; Biblical stories; worship

Pre-Civil War: moving in a counterclockwise circle, singing, clapping, stomping and beating on the floor rhythmically with a stick or broom.

NB: drums had been outlawed in South

LYRICS: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5759/

http://www.ringshout.org/definitionofringshout

http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Times/pure.cfm

Georg Friedrich Handel:“All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray”

Third Estate: “upward mobility” ---

All we have gone each to his own way like sheep….

• “All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way…– We have turned / Everyone to his own way...”

Musical joke:

They’re talking about sin – self-interest / narcissism – and they’re having a great time doing so! This is the fun part …

Then comes the slow/sad conclusion: We were saved …

“And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

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Georg Friedrich Handel:“All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray”